r/antiMLM Post removal

Posts in this community tend to fall into a few recognisable shapes. Each one needs a different answer.

• Company analysis: income disclosure statements, compensation plan breakdowns, product pricing and recruiting scripts. This is core content and is very rarely removable.
• Screenshots of a seller’s public posts, often a recruiting message or an income boast, shared to show how a pitch is worded. Reposting public marketing to criticise it is usually treated as commentary.
• Screenshots of private messages, such as a direct message sent to a friend or an acquaintance. These are more sensitive, because the sender did not publish them to an audience and the screenshot may show names, photos or contact details.
• Posts that name a specific upline or local seller, sometimes with a workplace, town or family detail. This is where the line between criticising a business and targeting a person gets crossed.
• Stories from people who lost money or friendships. These are personal accounts, and they generally stay unless they contain private information or provably false statements.

Notice what is missing from that list: the community has no reason to care about your private life. A post about your company’s compensation plan can be fully on topic. A post that shows where you live is not.

People in r/antiMLM often cite Federal Trade Commission material, and moderators and commenters know it. That is worth understanding before you write to anyone.

The FTC’s staff guidance on multi-level marketing says income claims need a reasonable basis and should reflect what a typical participant earns, after expenses. It says testimonials from high earners can be read as a claim that their results are typical, and that lifestyle images such as houses, cars and holidays are treated as implied earnings claims. It also says a company can be held responsible for what its participants say on social media, in presentations or in one-to-one conversations, with no safe harbour for companies that tried and failed to stop it. The guidance is non-binding, but it shows how regulators view the subject.

Enforcement has been real. In July 2016 the FTC announced that Herbalife would pay USD 200 million in consumer redress and restructure its U.S. business, with an independent auditor reporting to the agency for seven years. In October 2019 the FTC announced that AdvoCare and others would pay USD 150 million and accept bans from multi-level marketing; the FTC said 72.3 percent of AdvoCare distributors earned no compensation in 2016.

For you, the consequence is simple. A post that scrutinises earnings claims sits inside an area regulators openly care about. Asking Reddit to remove it because it hurts recruiting is unlikely to work and may draw more attention. A post that exposes a seller’s family is a different matter.

When a post about a named seller takes off, comments sometimes go further than the post. Someone finds a social profile, someone else shares an employer, and a stranger writes to a family member. Reddit’s rules treat that kind of conduct as a serious matter, and speed matters because screenshots travel.

If this is happening, capture the evidence before you ask for anything. Copy each permalink, take dated screenshots that show the username and the exact text, and note what time you saw it. Then report the specific comments or posts that show the private details, using Reddit’s report form. Do not ask customers, team members or friends to mass-report, downvote or flood the post. Reddit’s Rule 2 covers that kind of manipulation, and it tends to make a difficult situation worse.

Brigading also runs the other way. Sometimes a post from r/antiMLM is linked from elsewhere and outsiders pile on. If you have evidence of coordinated harassment, include the source and the pattern in your report. One precise report is better than five duplicate ones.

• Replying from a company account with a defensive statement. In this community, that often becomes the next post.
• Sending legal threats to the moderators or to commenters. They are screenshotted and shared.
• Asking your sellers to post glowing replies. The FTC’s rule on consumer reviews, effective October 2024, prohibits fake reviews and review suppression through threats.
• Deleting your own earlier posts in a hurry. It can look like concealment, and it will not remove what others have already quoted.
• Sending a copyright notice for material you do not own, or for criticism that plainly falls within fair use.

None of this means you must accept a false or harmful post. It means the route has to match the problem.